Similarly to Ron Conway's "if you have to shut down your company, that's fine, but do it properly -- pay your bills, pay your employees in full, do it in an orderly fashion -- if you do, I'll invest in you again, otherwise I won't."

There should be a "responsible startup code of practice" for winding down operations where customers might depend on it. Especially in the summer, when people could be on vacation, providing 3-6mo of notice for a shutdown would be good. Exceptions if it is really arterial bleeding of cash, or some legal problems which expose you to ongoing civil or criminal liability, but if it's just the cost of a few EC2 instances, there is no excuse for not keeping it running until users have all comfortably migrated away. Otherwise, people will be less likely to trust cloud services in the future, which pisses in the pool for everyone.

And just how does one build a startup with all that such an effort normally entails while factoring in the need to make sure others aren't "left behind" as that startup pushes on toward a hoped-for success? This issue can't even be discussed in meaningful terms. We all, of course, share in the problems of society and we all do our bit in trying to help with such problems - and who can help but feel for those who are suffering. That is a given for most people. But what then? Do I operate my business so that it doesn't eliminate any competitor in hopes of saving that competitor's jobs for its employees? Do I refrain from introducing disruptive technologies because they might actually disrupt the lives of others? Do I ask my representatives to enact laws granting permanent subsidies to companies such as Border's, Blockbuster, Tower Records, and so many others so that they can continue in business offering products or services that people more and more don't want? Or how about passing an innovation tax to capture the all the profits of the successful tech companies so as to level the playing field? Or how about a law banning all disruptive technologies so that we can all enjoy a world that resembles the one we knew a few decades ago?

The point, I think, is that startups exist on their own terms in a free enterprise system. The goal of a business venture is to succeed in a marketplace, not to ensure that others aren't affected by one's activities. Nor is the goal of a venture to give away what it earns to salvage the prospects of others who are failing. Individuals can do that if they like, and that is an issue of private conscience on what one does with private wealth. But it is not meaningful, in my view, to tell entrepreneurs to run their ventures with the aim of solving social problems as opposed to that of succeeding in a marketplace. When you try to do that, you wind up mixing up the goals of private venturing with those of broader social institutions such as government or those of private charitable impulse. That is why even to pose the question first stated above is to expose this as flawed thinking about the legitimate business concerns of a tech company.

This piece is a variation on the lament expressed in the piece from a few days ago about how Silicon Valley founders and entrepreneurs are (in effect) shallow, self-absorbed types who can't think beyond the next trivial innovation in hopes of gaining a quick-kill exit even as they neglect a slew of problems that beset humanity and are crying out for solutions if only these narrow types just had a larger vision and greater sense of social responsibility (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2760540 - of course, the piece had not put it in those exact terms but I hope I captured its flavor even as I used license in recasting its claims).

I hate to come across as narrow-minded but it really crosses a line to lecture the tech startup world about its moral responsibility as if "it" were a monolithic entity that had responsibilities beyond those that define what a given business venture is supposed to do. At best, this amounts to discussing the important issues in confused terms; at worst, it amounts to an author smugly claiming more refined sensibilities than the mere grubbers upon whom the author is passing a misdirected moral judgment.

Why are we all not millionaire successful entrepreneurs? On this site, I don't think it's because we lack ambition. I think it's more that there's a path toward success (or technically, several paths), but it's really easy to step off that path, and most of us have never been there before, don't have a guide, and only have the fuzziest of maps.

It's the same with people lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum. Most don't personally know anyone that has successfully jumped classes; they have no idea what this looks like, or what's entailed, or if anything they do is on the right track. And so they make very subtle mistakes.

You can see this a lot with the choice of institutions they go to and the fields they study. Popular articles - like the one posted here - simply say "Go to college and you'll get a job." So what many poor people do is they go to University of Phoenix and study Sports Medicine or something, and take on $200K of debt to do so.

You and I know this is stupid - but that information never filters down to the people who need it. The mainstream articles just say "Go to college and you'll get a job", they never say which college, or what to study, or how to study, or what it feels like when you just don't understand a concept but need to pass the final to graduate. I can give you a list of a couple dozen top colleges off the top of my head - but that's because I've worked in elite institutions, and I know which schools my coworkers went to, and I have lots of friends in that social circle. For the average person, that list is "Harvard. MIT. Stanford", and then if they don't get into one of those, they have no idea what to choose.

It's really easy to forget just how much we know simply by being part of a community that's "made it". Much of this stuff is not obvious at all until you see someone do it, and if everyone you know is in similarly dire straits, you have nobody to teach you.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/...

For those with less than a high school diploma, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 13.8 percent during July. For those with a high school diploma but no college, the rate was 10.1 percent. For those with some college experience but no college diploma, the rate was 8.3 percent. And for those with an undergraduate degree or better, the rate was 4.5 percent. That's less than one-third of the rate for high-school dropouts -- and it's exactly as Tyson said it was.

...

These aren't exactly comparable, since BLS does not release seasonally adjusted figures for those with advanced degrees. But we'll provide them anyway. The unadjusted July rate for those with masters' degrees was 4.9 percent. For those with professional degrees, it was 2.0 percent, and for those with doctorates, it was 1.9 percent.

Technology has always disrupted the low end of the workforce. The big difference this time around is just how fast the disruption has occurred. It took years for farm equipment advances to remove the need for farmhands or cars to remove the need for people who do horse shoes. The internet and computers in general have put entire types of work seemingly out of business overnight.

The 'new' economy is one where everyone will need to take control of their careers and constantly be thinking long term. The downside of this sort of economy is that the people who have no ambition will suffer. The upside is that those with ambition have an easier time than ever to try out their ideas and have huge upside potential.